I haven’t written a whole ton about Spring Training, so let’s take a Sunday to get caught up on some reading about what’s going on in and around the Pirates thus far in camp. David Todd has an excellent interview with Jim Benedict up at Bucs Dugout, which you can listen to or read. There’s […]

When Parks and Rec ended its run on NBC last week, I spent a little bit of time thinking about what it was that I liked about the show so much. Given that the show spent most of its second half making references to sabermetrics and once made an entire episode dedicated to Infinite Jest, it could […]

I’m a day behind on this story, but I think it’s an important one to weigh in on. Yesterday Bob Nutting talked to Rob Biertempfel at the Trib, saying that he’d like Andrew McCutchen to be a Pirate for a “long, long time” and Biertempfel’s sources indicated that while the Pirates are not actively engaged in extension talks […]

John Holdzkom started 2014 in independent ball and at one point in the season got cut by his indy league team. He has pitched for New Zealand’s World Baseball Classic team. One time he called in to Chelsea Peretti’s podcast, lamenting his blown baseball opportunity. The Pirates signed him out of the blue last summer, […]

The Pittsburgh Pirates proved their recent success wasn’t just a blip on the radar. After back-to-back playoff appearances in 2013 and 2014, the Pirates seem content on being on the winning side of things and plan to keep it that way for 2015. Following the play of franchise cornerstone Andrew McCutchen, the Pirates want to […]

With most of the early spring training talk about the Pirates being extremely positive, their bullpen is sort of the elephant in the room. Obviously Tony Watson and Mark Melancon are great and John Holdzkom was promising down the stretch last year, but the Bucs’ bullpen blew a lot of leads last year. They did […]

This is what I think is great about Jared Hughes: there’s an awfully good chance that he’s walking proof that the Pirates’ front office is a step ahead of most analysis about the relationship between pitching and defense. Over the course of his Pirate career, Hughes has pitched in 170 games and thrown 183 innings. […]

We are headed into murky territory for the < 500 series, as I’m not sure I have anywhere near 500 words to say about the players left to talk about. Still, I’m going to press on for at least a little longer. The upside is that if these posts are short, the possibility exists that […]

One of the nasty little side-effects of the Information Age is that a day that used to feel magical — the day pitchers and catchers report — is now one of the biggest anti-climaxes on the calendar. If you follow the

Andrew McCutchen, writing at the Player’s Tribune: Baseball used to be the sport where all you needed was a stick and a ball. It used to be a way out for poor kids. Now it’s a sport that increasingly freezes out kids whose parents don’t have the income to finance the travel baseball circuit. McCutchen […]

In his two seasons as a Pirate, Mark Melancon has this line: 142 IP, 111 H, 30 R, 26 ER, 19 BB, 141 K, 3 HR This is so good that it’s borderline comical. Three home runs and 19 walks in 142 innings? Out of every pitcher in baseball that’s thrown at least 100 innings […]

When I’m trying to figure out what a young or an unproven player will do in a coming season, most of the time I’ll try to find some sort of statistical signifier that points in one direction or another: Josh Harrison’s xBABIP, Gerrit Cole’s short stretches of dominance, etc. For Gregory Polanco, the argument is […]

In Charlie Wilmoth’s Dry Land (a great read to prep yourself for spring training if you didn’t read it last year!), he’s got an interview with former Indianapolis Indians’ play-by-play guy Scott McCauley where Scott talks about how Pirate fans would obsess over minor league players in a way that sort of befuddled every other minor league broadcaster that he’d ever […]

Besides Gerrit Cole, the two players that will have the most bearing on whether the 2015 Pirates are a good team or a great team are most likely their corner outfielders. Just like you can track the club’s mad dash in August and September to the NL’s second wild card with Gerrit Cole’s return from the disabled […]